Anti-Semites: True Partners for Peace with the Jewish State?

According to a recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), across 100 nations, 1.09 billion people (of the 4.2 billion surveyed) hold anti-Semitic attitudes, and half have never heard of the Holocaust. Across the board, those holding the highest level of anti-Semitic attitudes were where? You guessed it. The Middle East. Compare the 93% of Palestinians to the 9% of those in the USA, or 14% in Canada holding anti-Semitic attitudes, and it isn’t difficult to understand where the flaw lays in the peace discussion.

Map of anti-Semitic attitudes in the world.

“For the first time we have a real sense of how pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism is today around the world,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. “The data from the Global 100 Index enables us to look beyond anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric and quantify the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes across the globe. We can now identify [anti-Semitic] hot spots, as well as countries and regions of the world where hatred of Jews is essentially nonexistent.”

Published originally in the Jerusalem Post on 5/15/2014

In juxtaposition with the US and Canada, the south Asian country of Laos holds last place on the list; only 0.2% of its adult population holds anti-Semitic beliefs.

Using an 11-question survey, tested and retested over the past five decades, the ADL found 26% of sample data suggests that 1.09 billion people are deeply infected with anti-Semitic attitudes (based on the criteria that they answered ‘probably true’ to 6+/11 questions).